Midlife in Hell (Chosen by 40 #1)

Chapter 1 Sydney

Islammed my phone onto the pillow and blew out an irritated sigh.

The divorce wasn’t going well at all. The bastard thought I owed him spousal support.

That was the latest. He was an adjunct literature professor with no tenure, and I was a fairly successful romance writer, something that made his asshole itchy.

I started out in nursing and eventually wrote my first romance book under a pen name. I didn’t expect it to do anything, but it did. Pretty soon, I was able to quit my job and write full time. My fucking life was anything but a romance novel. I should have left first and years ago.

Yeah, sometimes, I was a dipshit. Karl turned into a bitter asshole as soon as my writing career took off.

He knocked my books as lady porn all the time and pretended like he wasn’t teaching Bible fanfiction.

Finally, he left me for his TA and acted like he’d wanted kids the entire time we were married.

He hadn’t. He seemed relieved when I was told I couldn’t have them. He threw it in my face that this nineteen-year-old child he was dating had childbearing hips. Yeah, fuck him. But I made way more money than he did, and he thought I owed him spousal support to keep up his lifestyle.

My lawyer fell out laughing when Karl’s lawyer sent that over because she had the receipts he’d been cheating with the fetus before he left. We didn’t have a prenup, but she was almost certain there was no way in fuck he was going to get it.

All of this wouldn’t have been so bad if the hot flashes hadn’t started.

No one prepared me for this. Not how it felt and how I was going to get gaslit about it.

They blamed anxiety at first because of Karl and tried to throw antidepressants at me.

I wasn’t really depressed about him, just pissed I hadn’t left earlier.

They finally put me on hormone replacement, but it didn’t start working right away. So far, it’d just made my skin really dry. And another hot flash hit as soon as I hung up with Karl, who was demanding I just give in and grant him the spousal support.

Yeah, first things first. I whipped my shirt and bra off. I usually got rid of that thing as soon as I got home, but I got interrupted. I went straight to the bathroom and turned the cold tap on the shower. Cold showers seemed to help.

Maybe I was imagining it, but it was almost like steam was coming off my skin as I stood under the cold water.

But that was ridiculous. I needed to stop letting Karl get to me.

As soon as the divorce was final, I was taking a vacation somewhere tropical and having a torrid affair with anyone who was nice to me.

Except it really seemed like steam was coming off of me. Uh, was that normal? I hadn’t read anything about that. The cold water didn’t seem to be helping, like it usually did. If anything, it was worse. This was the worst hot flash I’d had so far.

And then I just spontaneously combusted, and the entire roof blew off my bathroom.

What.the.fuck?